Never Trust A Lady

She supposed that what she felt more than anything, besides hungry, of course, was frightened. She actually had knots in her stomach-though that could have been hunger. But she didn’t think so. And she kept shivering, with a deep-down-inside cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the van.

“Carlysle?” Again Tom Hawkins probed the blackness with what he probably imagined was a whisper. “Hey-you cold? You’re shivering.”

She didn’t want to answer, afraid that if she did she might have to give voice to her thoughts. Terrible thoughts. Impossible thoughts. She fought to control the trembling, tried to make fier breathing slow and deep and even.

She heard rustlings, felt Tom moving around next to her, felt the faintest brush of air against her cheeks. And then something warm came across her arms and chest, settled around her shoulders, enveloped her like a warm bath, seeped through her insides like a cup of cocoa on a cold morning, It smelled strongly of tobacco, and old leather and man. It was Tom’s jacket. He’d taken off his own jacket and put it over her.

A curious warmth crept over her, and again it had nothing to do with temperature. It was more like a sunrise, the warmth that comes from light, touched with wonder, a revelation of sorts. When had anyone ever done such a thing for her before? She tried hard to remember. Certainly David never had.

It’s the little things, she thought for the second time that day.

And then she wondered if she’d been wrong about that, and whether maybe those things, the thoughtful little gestures, like holding a cigarette so the smoke doesn’t blow in someone’s face, the caring touch of a jacket selflessly shared…maybe those were the biggest things of all.

She’d never been able to explain, to her own or anyone else’s satisfaction, just what it was that had driven her to tell David, on the eve of their twenty-first wedding anniversary, that she wanted a divorce. She remembered that David had asked her, still in shock and disbelief, “Why? What have I done? Have I ever abused you, been unfaithful to you? What?” So many of her friends, and even her mother, had suggested she was only suffering the normal discontent of middle age. How she’d come to loathe the term “midtife crisis.”

Oddly enough, it had been the two people closest to, and most affected by, the breakup who’d been the most supportive of her decision. As much as they loved their dad. Lynn and Tracy had always seemed to understand. Never once had they contributed to Jane’s already overwhelming burden of guilt She’d always wondered if it was perhaps because they’d been old enough to witness and judge from a woman’s perspective rather than a child’s. Because, already experimenting with relationships of their own, they’d sensed on an almost instinctive level the soulcrushing loneliness she’d suffered in hers.

Married. Jane had been the most “alone” person she knew, a single in a world of couples. She’d never even known what it felt like to be a couple. Other married people she knew always seemed to refer to themselves as “us,” or “we.” Jane had never thought of herself and David that way. How could she, when every decision, all the work and worry and responsibility involving the children and household had been hers and hers alone? David’s world and only concern had been his work, his business, and it had been a world he’d kept separate and secret from his wife, guarded as jealously as a miser hoards his riches.

After so many years, she’d stopped questioning the way things were between them, even made little jokes about it: “Oh, yes, David and I get along great, as long as we don’t do anything together!” And she’d known all along that something, something important, was missing.

But this is what I wanted, she thought as she lay awake in the swaying moving van, steeped in the warmth and wonder of Tom Hawkins’s old leather jacket. This is what I meant when I told David I wanted a chance before it was too late. A chance…to feel loved. A chance to feel cherished. Valued. This.

The “little” things? But that’s what makes it all work. Things like this. Now I know.

And she thought how ironic it was, and how damned unfair that she should have to learn this from a stranger, a man just passing through her life, this man from Interpol with eyes like broken promises and a face that looked as if it had been caught between a rock and a hard place.

The van had stopped again. It had done so before, briefly, but not under circumstances where it would have been advisable, or even possible, to attract someone’s attention by pounding on the doors. Twice they’d gone over scales, and once over what Hawk was almost certain was a very long bridge, or perhaps a causeway. Since then their progress had been slow, stop-and-go, which made him fairly sure they were no longer on the interstate, and therefore, logic told him, most likely nearing their destination.

And then the truck’s tires had rumbled across something holtow-sounding-another bridge perhaps? But no, too short to be a bridge. And now at last the van sat almost motionless, the floor vibrating with the idling purr of the tractor’s powerful diesel engine. Far off and very faintly, he heard a door slam.

“Carlysle,” he said hoarsely, nudging the part of her closest to him, which he suspected was, once again, her bottom. Thumbing on the flashlight, he confirmed that yes, she had scooted herself down and was sleeping curled on her side with her head pillowed on her tote bag, and that it was indeed her fanny tucked in cozily against his thighs.

He leaned across the swell of her hip and pulled the collar of his jacket away from her face. She stirred, and he said again, “Cartyste-hey, wake up. Rise and shine.”

And then, for some reason, he left the light there and watched her come awake, watched her features warm and liven and become magically, uniquely Jane, while thoughts and emotions flitted through his head like bats in the twilight. Thoughts that came and went too quickly to identify, emotions he wouldn’t have wanted to hold on to even if he could have managed to capture them. I want…I wish… No! I don’t. I don’t.

He realized that she was squinting, blinking in protest at the light, and moved it to one side. “Hate to wake you,” he said gruffly, “but it looks like we may be getting out of here soon. Thought you might want to, uh, make yourself presentable.”

“Mmm, thanks.” She hitched herself around and sat up, coming out of his jacket like a kitten out of its nest, first one arm, then the other. He watched each hand in turn perform the little touching, patting gestures women use to put themselves to rights as she murmured, “I really didn’t expect to sleep. Have we really stopped? What time is it, do you know?”

“About five, last time I looked.”

“Five-in the evening? My goodness, I must have slept several hours, at least. Did you sleep at all? You really should have woke me.”

He shook his head and said, “That’s okay, I probably wouldn’t have slept anyway.” He watched her fidget, locating her tote bag, tugging at her clothes. Watched her identify and recognize his jacket, pull it slowly down and across her lap, her hands straightening and shaping it, her fingers lingering in the buttery softness of it, almost caressing.

“It was very nice of you to give me this,” she said, and the husky burr of her voice rubbed against his nerves like fur. “Thank you. I hope you weren’t cold because of it.”

He coughed and said, “Nah…keep it if you want to. I’m warm enough.”

“Thanks, but…I really am fine now.” She was holding it out to him. “It’s a very nice jacket. Nice and warm.”

He took it from her, grunting a little as he shrugged it on. “It was my father’s,” he heard himself say. And surprised himself even more by continuing, “I’d always wanted one like it when I was a kid. I just sort of… confiscated it after he died. Sometimes I think I can almost still smell him.”

And now it was warm from her body, and if he closed his eyes he could catch just the barest hint of her elusive scent…

His stomach rumbled loudly.

“I’m hungry, too,” she instantly responded in that comfortable, unflappable way she had as she was rummaging around in her tote bag. Producing a brush, or anyway one of those things with plastic spikes instead of bristles that women seem to use nowadays, she began to rake it briskly through her hair. “And I could sure use a potty. Do you think anyone would hear us if we banged on the door?”

“Don’t know,” said Hawk. “I thought I heard the truck’s doors slam, but haven’t heard anything since.”

She’d finished with the brush and was poking it back into the depths of her bag, although as near as he could see in that light it hadn’t done much to change the way those curls of hers wanted to lie along her neck and around her ears and temples. He decided not to tell her about the endearing little flip that stubbornly persisted on the side